Lapillus Bug, 2013
geoLAB
Courtesy of the artist
This work consists of a plate full of breakfast leftovers and a small black ball—the “Lapillus Bug”—hovering above the plate like a fly, seemingly undecided about which tasty morsel to alight on first. This so-called pebble (the meaning of the Latin word lapillus) consists of particles that are being bombarded by ultra-low frequency waves inaudible to human beings. That’s what keeps the bug aloft—so, actually, the secret behind its motion is strictly physics. Kono Michinari, Takayuki Hoshi and Yasuaki Kakehi thus illustrate how life can seemingly be breathed into inert material and, indeed, in a way that inevitably evokes comparisons on our part between them and creatures they “resemble.” Deploying ever-more-sophisticated technology is what makes it possible to create objects or images that are hard for us to tell apart from the original—that is, from actual living things.
